


Nothing Wasted

by deliciousshame



Series: AoKuro Week 2017 [5]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AoKuro Week, AoKuro Week 2017, Future Fic, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 02:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousshame/pseuds/deliciousshame
Summary: Daiki has enough to worry about without wondering whether you can mess up the future by travelling there, considering his present is that future's past.Fuck time travel.





	Nothing Wasted

**Author's Note:**

> For day five of AoKuro Week, prompt: time travel.

“Daiki-kun?”

Daiki doesn’t even have the time to be confused. Two words, and he can already tell something is wrong. He might even be dying. “Tetsu, did you just call me by my first name!?”

Light snorting from another room. “It’s been years, you should get used to it already.”

Daiki cannot imagine a world where he would get used to Tetsu calling him by his first name, even after years.

He would totally take it, though. 

But let’s get back to business. Something is really, really wrong. “Where am I?”

Steps coming toward him. “What are you even tal-” and Tetsu stops dead into his tracks. 

Or someone he assumed was Tetsu does, because that’s not Tetsu. He’s way too old to be Tetsu. 

But he sounds like Tetsu. And looks like Tetsu quite a bit. He also answers to Tetsu, so “Tetsu?”

“…Daiki-ku… Aomine-kun?” Like those two names aren’t the same person. 

Maybe they aren’t. “Yeah.”

“Why are you younger?”

“Right back at you. Well, switch younger to older, but you get the idea.”

Pseudo-Tetsu frowns. “You are Aomine Daiki. There’s no mistaking you.” Even when seemingly confused, he still sounds fond. Looks like this world’s Daiki has got it all. 

“That I am. So, where am I?”

“Our home. Well, Daiki-kun’s and I’s home.”

Ooookay. “We live together?”

“Yes. Wait, what day are we today?”

“You’re asking me?” But Tetsu has already left the room for reasons only known to him. Daiki wonders whether he should follow him or stay there patiently, but curiosity wins. Plus, if this version of Daiki and Tetsu are living together, Tetsu probably likes him too much to get angry at a younger version of him. 

The house looks pretty big. Okay, he’s wrong; it’s huge. It’s a bit disjointed, the tastefully decorated rooms often hosting some random stuff that doesn’t really fit it. All that doesn’t matter as much as the occasional pictures of, well, not them exactly but almost, or the trinkets that you can tell have much more meaning behind them than they let show. This house is certainly theirs.

Daiki is looking at a picture of them at what looks like a college graduation ceremony when Tetsu comes back in, a note in his hands. “That’s what I thought. You warned me about this, though you really could have been more specific.”

Daiki isn’t feeling less confused. “I told you what.”

“You told me something strange would happen today, but not to worry about it, it would take care of itself. I suppose this means you’ll end up back where you came from at some point. Really, when you tell me about it later, please be more specific. Time travel, really.”

This is hurting Daiki’s head. “I don’t think I can. I mean, that’s how I already did it, right? I’d be changing the future if I didn’t. Damn it, this whole thing makes no sense.”

“Time travel shouldn’t even exist. That it makes no sense should be obvious.”

“Yes, well, it does since your me remembers this, so there’s no point in wondering about that. More importantly, tell me about it all. I’m not crazy, we’re together together, right? We’re not, like, co-dependent roommates?” At first glance, this future looks pretty perfect to him. Cool house, his desired significant other, probably lots of cash from the looks of things.

Tetsu looks confused. “I’m not sure how much I should tell you.”

“Don’t worry about it! I told you that it wasn’t a big deal and I’m the only one that knows how it turned out. You should trust me.”

“Still, the future should be a mystery to everyone.”

Daiki can already tell Tetsu is getting more certain as seconds pass. That’s not a battle Daiki’s going to win. Plus, he’s right. He’ll be looking forward to seeing how things happen. “Okay, fine, whatever, but we _are_ together? Because we’ve got a lot of couple pictures if we’re just bros sharing a house.”

Tetsuya looks around him. Why is he acting surprised? “I guess we do have lots of pictures. You’re right. We are together.”

“Nice. How did we end up together?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

“Come on! Help a guy out! Don’t you want us to be together?”

He can see Tetsuya is amused. Maybe Daiki can charm him into agreeing? He has an obvious soft spot for him. “You’ll manage just fine without my help, I assure you.”

Well, he could have been more explicit, but that’s still encouraging. It seems like Daiki has this one in the bag and he never even knew it. Go him. “You don’t wanna talk, okay. What am I doing then? Am I just sitting here, waiting until something happens? Should I go seek out a scientist or, like, visit a shrine or something?”

Tetsuya frowns. “I don’t think so. Aomine-kun would have told me if we had something specific to do. Maybe you should just stay put until you get back to your own time.”

Daiki flops on the living room’s couch. “Okay. Where’s the remote? Oh, it’s there.”

It’s all English as far as he can see. “Are we in America? You can tell me. There’s just no way we’re in Japan.” He scans the channels, trying to find a game. Those are words he’s familiar with, plus he doesn’t need to know English to follow that. Sadly, nothing’s going on. 

“Do you have dvds?”

Tetsu has been watching him flounder with the tv with a slightly bemused expression. “They are in the shelves beside the television. You’ll have to check if there is a Japanese audio track on them, but some should.”

Daiki is impressed for a minute. There are shelves upon shelves of dvds for movies he’s never seen but probably would like, since he’s the one who picked them. Heh, he could watch a movie and go spoil everything about it in a couple years. 

He’s still keeping an eye out for games. Maybe they kept records of their favourite games. Maybe he’s in there somewhere. He’s pretty sure Tetsu wouldn’t tell him if he was a pro, but it must be the case. They’re here. Why would they be living here if not for that? Not that Tetsu confirmed that, but he doesn’t need to.

He doesn’t find game dvds, but there is something else that catches his attention. The case doesn’t have a professional logo on the side or anything. He pulls it out. 

It’s a wedding dvd. For their wedding. Daiki stares at the box in his hand. Wow. That’s… Wow. 

He puts it back on the shelf. Tetsu doesn’t look like he noticed. Good. There are some things you really shouldn’t know in advance. He has no desire to watch his own wedding before it happens. It’s just… a bit overwhelming, actually. He knew they were together. He knew they were serious. He didn’t think they were _this_ together.

After that, he just picks a random action flick and stares at it in a daze. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to spoil it later even if he wanted to. Tetsu doesn’t have to worry about him attracting attention to himself and being abducted by men in black. They have those in America, right? 

The movie ends without him noticing. 

“Are you hungry? When was it when you disappeared?”

Daiki is a bit confused, but he finally gets it. “About the same time it was here, I guess? A bit after lunch.”

“Let's go out for dinner. I’m not sure I have enough food to soothe your teenage appetite.”

“Weren’t you the one that didn’t want me to know where I was? Won’t me being out cause problems?”

“You already know, and I’ll just tell anyone that asks that you’re a relative of Daiki-kun. They won’t question it, especially when I tell them you don’t speak English.”

That probably makes more sense than anyone wondering if he could be a younger version of himself. “Okay. Since we’re here, let’s get burgers.”

Tetsu laughs. “I didn’t expect anything else.”

He doesn’t even have to step out of the house to know how not in Japan they are. Just from the door opening, everything from the architecture to the people walking down the streets to the smell of the air, it all conveys that he’s not home anymore. 

He loves it.

They go to a fast food restaurant. Those things work the same everywhere. Tetsu still ends up ordering so that Daiki doesn’t make a fool of himself.

It’s so incredibly weird to sit down on the plastic chair in front of Tetsu like they did so many times before, and yet everything else is different. It’s not their restaurant. The voices around them aren’t anything he can understand. The burgers don’t taste the same. Tetsu himself is still Tetsu, still sitting straight with his milkshake, but he’s older. Daiki never got to see him age. He didn’t see him graduate. He didn’t pick a house with him. He doesn’t even know what Tetsu does. 

Maybe this sense of loss is something only time travellers experience. This feeling of having missed so many good things, mixed up with the knowledge that it will all happen to him if he can just be patient enough to get there.

Tetsu is laughing at him again. This version of Tetsu seems to be a bit more expressive. Daiki hopes it’s because it’s a version of Tetsu that is happier. A version of Tetsu that Daiki made happier. “Why are you laughing?”

“You don’t eat like that much anymore. I knew, but I think I forgot just how much you could ingest.”

Daiki shrugs. Tetsu’s not the first person that impressed. If he finds it amusing, he can laugh. Daiki can’t be mad about anything that Tetsu enjoys. 

Daiki tries to chat with Tetsu, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Tetsu is visibly reluctant to tell him anything on the off chance that he’ll mess with the space-time continuum or something. 

They walk back home in silence. Daiki wonders why is here. What is even the point of showing up in the future if you find out nothing new? How did he appear here? He suspects Tetsu is just as frustrated. 

He is going to spend the night here? With _Tetsu_? 

There’s no way Tetsu is going to let him share his bed, even in the most platonic of sense. That would just make this already strange situation weirder. They probably have a guest room or two.

Daiki shakes his head. He’s getting way ahead of himself right now. For all he knows, he’ll get back at his own time in a few minutes. 

Tetsu opens the front door of their (still awesome) house. How can somewhere you just learned about feel so comfortable?

He’s pulled out of his thoughts by Tetsu’s voice. “Aomine-kun.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how I feel about telling what is going to happen, but… Don’t give up. No matter what, don’t give up. You’ll get through it. I swear. You know this now. It’ll be hard, I can’t tell you it won’t be, but you can do it.”

Oh. Okay. So there is some shit incoming. Daiki knew his life couldn’t be as perfect as it looked from the outside. “I’ll try to remember that.”

Tetsu looks a bit worried. “You must.”

“I will, I will, don’t worry about me. Thanks for the warning. But I’m not worried.”

“Why not? You have no idea what is going to happen.”

“But you’ll be with me, right? The two of us can get through anything.”

He gets a smile for his efforts. He can’t wait for when he’ll wake up to that every day. 

They watch another movie, then Tetsuya sends him to bed. Daiki thinks Tetsu might believe he’s younger than he is, because it is still really early, but maybe they’re both more tired than they should.

He wakes up in his room in his parents’ home, pretty convinced he dreamt the whole thing, until he finds a note he’s sure he didn’t write. 

_Hi. It’s me. Check your phone. You have a date with Tetsu this afternoon. Don’t fuck it up._

And he signed it. It’s definitely his writing, but it’s a bit different. Age will do that, he guesses. 

Of course he’s the meddling type. He’s not even surprised he got himself a date. He would totally do that. Shit this thing is confusing.

Well, okay. He’s going on a date. Sure, he can handle that. Time to get ready.


End file.
